My research is motivated by a general skepticism regarding the trustworthiness of our experiences of agency. This intuition has led me to pursue projects that collectively form an answer to the question: "How can we be wrong about the nature and character of our own actions?" I approach this question by focusing on mental disorder, and in particular the ways in which the so-called "loss of control" that occurs in certain mental disorders can either come apart from or otherwise complicate the phenomenology associated with the actions in question. My dissertation, "Loss of Control and Phenomenology in Mental Disorder", serves as the foundation for this project.
Publications
Anorexia nervosa: Illusion in the sense of agency (2023)
Forthcoming in Mind & Language-- Click here for the Early View article on the publisher's website.
Click here to download a preprint draft of the article.
Abstract
This paper first identifies and then provides a novel analysis of an important feature of anorexia nervosa (AN) that has gone unrecognized in the philosophy of psychiatry literature. This feature is the discrepancy between first-personal experiences of anorexic food restriction and the clinical descriptions of these same behaviors at the level of agentive awareness. In order to reconcile these two depictions of anorexic actions, I develop a positive account of the sense of agency in AN that accommodates current empirical findings while also providing valuable insight into how it is that anorexics can sincerely report feeling fully in control over their food restriction.
Forthcoming in Mind & Language-- Click here for the Early View article on the publisher's website.
Click here to download a preprint draft of the article.
Abstract
This paper first identifies and then provides a novel analysis of an important feature of anorexia nervosa (AN) that has gone unrecognized in the philosophy of psychiatry literature. This feature is the discrepancy between first-personal experiences of anorexic food restriction and the clinical descriptions of these same behaviors at the level of agentive awareness. In order to reconcile these two depictions of anorexic actions, I develop a positive account of the sense of agency in AN that accommodates current empirical findings while also providing valuable insight into how it is that anorexics can sincerely report feeling fully in control over their food restriction.
Selected Works in Progress
[Titles redacted for review purposes]
[Titles redacted for review purposes]
- A paper in which I develop a "horseshoe model" for understanding self-control and loss of control in the context of addictive disorders. In particular, I draw attention to the web of similarities and dissimilarities between anorexia nervosa and substance use disorder in order to make the case for a more nuanced understanding of counterfactual loss of control that my horseshoe model can accommodate.
- A paper that provides an answer to the question of why some mental illnesses are associated with the phenomenology of self-control (e.g. anorexia nervosa) while others are associated with the phenomenology of loss of control (e.g substance use disorder). This paper expands on the phenomenological data brought to light by the horseshoe model developed in the previous paper, and it serves as the foundation for an empirically informed understanding of alienation and identification in the context of purportedly disordered actions that I will continue to expand upon in future work.
